Curtain all the way around

[Cubsno1]

Hi all.

I finally have a home and some money. I am going to start building my stereo system.

I was thinking of setting aside a spot in my basement, carpeting the floor, and suspending a curtain rail from the ceiling. The listening area would be entirely surrounded by curtain. One would part them to enter.

If one put the curtain rail through a sleeve, one would get pretty much a smooth curtain wall. I was thinking of putting a series of grommeted holes in the curtain, and passing the rail through them. That would result in a pleated curtain, all the way around.

I was thinking of some fairly heavy material, so it wouldn't be sonically transparent, but wouldn't be sonically opaque, either. Some of sound would leak out through the curtain, hit the concrete wall, and come back. Very little would come back through, but some would.

The speakers I have in mind are planar, that project both forward and backward.

There would be no distinct corners. I was thinking of roughly rectangular, with rounded c orners. So certain reinforcement issues that sometimes happen should be less of a problem.

So, what do you think about this scheme. Are there drawbacks I haven't thought of? Has anyone else done something similar?

If I don't do something, the concrete walls will make the sound unbearable. I don't have room for my system upstairs.

Regards,

Cubs No. 1
(Well, it briefly seemed like that might be the case.)

 

[mtrycrafts]

Hi all.

I finally have a home and some money. I am going to start building my stereo system.

I was thinking of setting aside a spot in my basement, carpeting the floor, and suspending a curtain rail from the ceiling. The listening area would be entirely surrounded by curtain. One would part them to enter.

If one put the curtain rail through a sleeve, one would get pretty much a smooth curtain wall. I was thinking of putting a series of grommeted holes in the curtain, and passing the rail through them. That would result in a pleated curtain, all the way around.

I was thinking of some fairly heavy material, so it wouldn't be sonically transparent, but wouldn't be sonically opaque, either. Some of sound would leak out through the curtain, hit the concrete wall, and come back. Very little would come back through, but some would.

The speakers I have in mind are planar, that project both forward and backward.

There would be no distinct corners. I was thinking of roughly rectangular, with rounded c orners. So certain reinforcement issues that sometimes happen should be less of a problem.

So, what do you think about this scheme. Are there drawbacks I haven't thought of? Has anyone else done something similar?

If I don't do something, the concrete walls will make the sound unbearable. I don't have room for my system upstairs. Regards,
Cubs No. 1
(Well, it briefly seemed like that might be the case.)

What are you after with the curtains?

I am sure you will get other inputs. I don't think this is a good idea at all.

Firstly, your speakers do depend on reflected sound that the curtain will affect, especially the high frequencies. The low frequencies will not be affected much at all and it will be all over that basement and the rest of the house.
Your soundfield will be affected.

 

[jostenmeat]

Cubsno1,

I also own dipolar speakers, namely electrostats. IMO, the most important thing to do is give your speakers ample distance from the front wall, 4ft or more, and then to significantly treat the wall. I really do mean significantly, as in line up treatments across the entire front, for example.

What are the dimensions of the room? Dipoles/planars can be pretty tough to implement in a smaller room, and so I hope yours is large.

I wouldn't do the curtain thing so much as simply adding broadband absorption panels. A lot of them. Or make them. A lot of them.

The curtain is not broadband, and it is broadband that you will want and need.

You don't have to add all of the treatments all at once, if money is an issue. You will need to experiment, quite a bit in fact.

 

[haraldo]

Curtains will not have so much effect on the acustics, even if they are very very heavy fabric, but they will have som slight effect..... but not in midrange and bass at all.....

It's important not to overdamp the room, if the curtains are there for visual purposes then fine...

You could buy some rockwool acoustic boards, they come in varying sizes and the thicker ones may have the effect you're after, and they're cheap and it doesn't matter if they're ugly because the curtains cover them.

You may cut some in sth like 20" width and put them 45 degrees to the corner, they will somehow likely perform as bass traps, not to the same level as the best commercial designs, but this may be something to try and it's not expensive. The thicker the board the better, and if you can leave space between corners and bass traps, effect will increase.
I'm going to do the same at my home....

Just try and test, to see what works for you and what doesn't

There's also the illbruck acoustic products, they provide all kinds of different types of acoustic boards, diffusors and absorbers wedges and much more, much cheaper to buy these compared to completed commercial products, and they serve the same purpose.
http://www.illbruck-sonex.com/products.php

Good luck

I have also made a calculator in excel that, if you enter all the room dimensions, you get the frequency of all standing waves in the room (only works for square rooms), I will see if I can locate this and provide this......
PS, only works with metric dimensions, not feet....
This could be a help to sort out what are trouble frequencies in a room

Pls remind me if I foorget about this excel spreadsheet

-Harald

 

[bpape]

Agreed. Curtains, no matter how heavy, will be purely upper mid and high frequency absorptive and do nothing below that. Add in the fact that doing it all around is WAY too much absorption and the room will be very skewed in terms of decay times and sound very dead - but still with muddy bass.

Bryan

 

[the grunt]

I have curtains 360 degrees around my room to eliminate reflected light. I only chose this route because I live in an apartment and couldn’t just paint the walls. As mtrycrafts and bpape say it does have an effect on the high frequencies but not that much as far as I can tell (no measurements to back this up). Adding more soft furniture to the room did more to absorb sound even the high frequencies than the curtains did.

One drawback to consider is the fire hazard curtains can create. Even when fire treated they can be highly combustible due to their vertical orientation. Though they may not burn long enough to allow a fire to extend to other areas they will generate enough heat to melt most plastics in the room and also will cause lots of smoke damage. Just something to keep in mind.

One advantage of not painting the room dark is that I can open the curtains exposing the white wall brightening up the room when not using it for HT/Gaming. Another advantage is having total blackout (virtually no reflected light). I feel that “blackout” is one of the best investments I made to enhance my overall HT/Gaming experience. The screen just seems to hang suspended in space and with no visual distractions it’s hard not to be drawn in completely to the on-screen action. But this can be done more easily with paint.

So if you want curtains for blackout purposes they can work very well, however, if you are looking to tame the audio then following the advice of jostenmeat and haraldo with targeted room treatments is the way to go.

Cheers,
Dean

 

[Cubsno1]

Hm. Sounds like curtains are a bad idea. The actual room walls are very far away from where I want to place my speakers, and where I want to sit. The basement is kind of a big empty space.

Guess I'll have to rethink.

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.....

 

[bpape]

Curtains in and of themselves aren't this big, evil thing, as long as they're just a part of the treatment scheme. Doing the whole room in them is just too much - sorry.

Bryan

 

[mtrycrafts]

Hm. Sounds like curtains are a bad idea. The actual room walls are very far away from where I want to place my speakers, and where I want to sit. The basement is kind of a big empty space.

Guess I'll have to rethink.

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.....

Can you wall of a section for your room, makes it smaller, speakers closer to walls and seating closer to speakers?
If the room is really large, you may have echo issues as well.